Madam Speaker, first of all, I am delighted with this opportunity to speak to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot.
Since we first came to the House of Commons on October 25, 1993, you have come to recognize the spirited style of the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot. Although style is not necessarily a guarantee of competence, I think the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot passes the test. He is both spirited and competent, and I want to commend him on the way he defends the interests of our party and the interests of Quebec.
This motion, and I will read it quickly, says that the hon. member moved, seconded by the hon. member for Châteauguay,
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following therefor:
"Bill C-76, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 1995, be not now read a second time but that it be read a second time this day six months hence."
I must say that I do not claim to be as competent as the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot in this particular area, so I asked him to explain the purpose of this amendment. For the benefit of our listeners, not necessarily in this House but outside the House, I would say that the purpose of this amendment is to let the Minister of Finance go back to the drawing board, to ask him to go back and do his homework.
I have a 16-year old son in high school, and when he shows my wife and me some work that is not up to par, we tell him to go back and do his homework. That is the purpose of the amendment: to ask the Minister of Finance to go back and do his homework.
Why? Because there are a number of questions worth asking Canadians and Quebecers who are listening. Is this budget realistic when fails to mention $6.6 billion in unpaid taxes which are not recovered? Is this budget realistic when it is so reluctant to tax Canada's big corporations? According to the statistics, between 62,000 and 70,000 companies in Canada make a profit and do not pay a cent in taxes. Is that normal? Should a democratic society like ours accept this double standard, when the middle class and the poor are getting poorer and the rich and the big corporations get richer at their expense?
Is this normal? Is this acceptable from a social point of view? I am convinced that all these people who are having lunch in their kitchens, every time they get the mail and see their bills piling up and interest rates go up, all these people wonder whether they will be able to afford a new car two or three years from now. Will this young couple be able to afford a house two or three years from now, a roof over their heads? Will they be doomed to live in poverty? Will our prospects seem better two or three years from now, or are we going to go back into a recession? These are considerations that this legislation totally ignores.
Something else. Are these tax loopholes normal? Is it normal to see millionaires who do not pay taxes and, in some cases, draw unemployment insurance benefits? That takes some doing. In any case, on the Île d'Orléans and the Beaupré flats, people say: "C'est le bout", which means adding insult to injury.
Family trusts. When he brought down his budget on February 27, the Minister of Finance announced that the family trust system would be abolished. He forgot to point out it would be abolished in 1999.
This means, if I am a very rich family that has a family trust, I have until 1999 to adjust to the new rules and to find other tax loopholes, other investment vehicles so that I can continue to shelter these amounts. So the question is whether all this, whether this budget is normal, acceptable and realistic in the Canada and Quebec of 1995.
When I go back to my riding on Fridays and on the weekends, people often stop me at the corner store or at the shopping centre to tell me that it did not hurt as much as they expected. This may be true, but we have to look beyond the words to see how vicious the budget was. I tell these people to wait for the Quebec government to bring down its own budget to see how the federal budget will affect them.
And if I was talking to the people of Ontario, I would tell them to wait and see what kind of problems the Ontario government will have. The budget includes a decentralizing measure whose only aim is to offload part of the deficit onto the provinces and make them pay for something else. We will see how much Ontario and Quebec have been affected, when they bring down their budgets. The finance ministers of the two provinces have already mentioned this, in any case.
It is almost a truism to say that the real budget promised this year will be carried over to next year, once again. Why is the federal government waiting until next year, we might ask? Is it expecting the Quebec referendum to be held in May or June and therefore putting off the offensive cuts in health care, education and social assistance until afterward? I ask you. Is this not the case?
The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, however, promised the introduction of flexible federalism. Is this flexible federalism? Now we have a real idea of the cost of the status quo and of a no vote in the upcoming referendum.
Coming back to transportation, which is the field with which, as my party's critic, I am most familiar. I said, in reaction to this budget, that the federal government had decided to hold a garage sale with Transport Canada. Why would I say such a thing?
I said it because the Martin budget announced program review cuts of $1.1 billion, or 50.8 per cent of expenditures between 1995 and 1998. If we include the cuts from the preceding budget, Department of Transport spending will be reduced by $1.4 billion between 1994 and 1998. In fact, the measures in the Martin budget will allow the government to save $2.6 billion in the Department of Transport over three years as a result of the program review.
We should look at what makes us think that the government is getting out of transportation. Well, there are the moves to privatize announced in this budget, the planned commercialization of the air navigation system. First of all, let us be clear that most of the employees affected by rationalization in the government will be transferred to the private sector. A non-profit corporation will be set up, looking after the 5,800 employees now working for the air navigation system.
I would remind the hon. members that our party is not necessarily opposed in principle to the creation of a non-profit corporation in the move to commercialize the air navigation service. However, I and my party still have questions about this plan that we would like answered. Among other things, what would be the value of the assets transferred and what would the transfer cost? Before giving our full blessing, we will need answers to the questions that we will be asking at the appropriate time.
The second sector in which the government has announced plans to privatize is Canadian National. It will be recalled that the report of the government group, composed entirely of Liberal members-no members of the official opposition or the Reform Party were included-recommended that before CN could be put up for sale, its debt should be reduced, its profits increased and the network rationalized, among other things.
Again, it should be pointed out that CP's offer to buy CN for $1.4 billion was totally unacceptable. This point was debated, and we had the opportunity to agree with the government that offering $1.4 billion for CN's assets was totally unacceptable. We do agree on that.
It remains to be seen, however, how much CN's privatization will actually bring in. Let us not forget that CN is the property of Canadian and Quebec taxpayers. So, it should not be sold at bargain price to friends of the regime or those who make donations to the Liberal campaign fund. In that regard, the official opposition will play its role as a watchdog, to see if CN's purchase price reflects its true value.
The Bloc Quebecois is now the only party defending the rights of the workers, including the right to strike in Canada, as evidenced by the NDP's failure to show up last weekend, when special legislation was passed to force resumption of operations in the railway industry. So, we will have to make sure that the rights of CN workers are not trampled in the privatization process, that their rights will be maintained. We will certainly get to talk about this issue again.
Also contemplated in this budget as part of the privatization effort is the commercialization of operations under the national airports policy. A task force was appointed by the Government of Quebec to provide assistance to those municipalities and local groups who wish to undertake negotiations with Ottawa on this subject.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Quebec's labour minister, Jacques Léonard, on taking a very worthwhile initiative in support of municipalities which may be facing airport privatization or even closure, because the problem has not been resolved. Considering that the airport in Sept-Îles lost $1.9 million and the one in Baie-Comeau, $1.2 million, while in Val-d'Or the airport is also running on a deficit, we have to ask ourselves if municipal taxpayers will be able to absorb these deficits?
It is important to bear in mind, when the federal government invests in our regions, these funds are not gifts to us. As a matter of fact, it is our money because, as far as I know, Sept-Îles residents receiving services from the federal government which is building an airport pay federal taxes through automatic payroll deductions or, in the case of professionals, make tax payments, so they are entitled to receive services from the federal government.
A fourth target for privatization in this budget is the motor vehicle testing centre in Blainville, which should remain in the hands of the government but whose operation will be handed over to the private sector in the course of this year. Negotiations are apparently under way. On this particular subject, we reserve comment as we have received information regarding some goings-on that are not very-I do not want to make a religious comment, but my colleague from Chicoutimi is suggesting that I should say not very kosher.
It is true that, like the hon. member, I come from the Saguenay. There seem to be some dubious goings-on with regard to this operation, but I cannot go any further because I want to save this for questioning the Minister of Transport in due course.
This budget provides for the revocation of the Western Grain Transportation Act and the elimination of a $560 million subsidy. This subsidy created, once again, a double standard in Canada, especially in the railway sector.
We realized that in the railway sector-and this comment does not apply only to Quebec-, there are two different criteria to determine the profitability of rail lines in Canada: everything east of Winnipeg had to be profitable in order to survive and continue operating, while everything west of Winnipeg was considered to be a subsidized service. This in turn led to some very strange things. They even discovered that some trainloads of grain were shipped to Vancouver via the port in Thunder Bay just to qualify for the subsidy.
I remember when we were kids and we used to play Monopoly. After going around the board, we would pass "Go" and claim $200 before continuing to circle around. This truly reminds me of a game of Monopoly.
By eliminating this subsidy, the government will put an end to this game of Monopoly. We would like to be supportive and say that this is a good measure, but there is always an unfortunate aspect. In this case, it is the fact that the budget provides compensation-and I hope that farmers of Île d'Orléans and the Beaupré shore will not choke when they hear this-to the tune of $2.9 billion to western agricultural producers.